A Different Call
by februarystars
Summary: How Clint met Natasha. Rating currently for language. A series of scenes in their history. Includes Nick Fury, Agent His-name-is-agent Coulson, and James "Bucky" Barnes.
1. siberia

**AN: **I loved Clint/Natasha in the film and promptly dove into some Avengers comics where I fell deeply in love with the Winter Soldier storyline. This is kind of a hybrid of mostly movie and a little comic book universe. The bit about Natasha's feet not being as bruised and ruined as a ballerina's would be is taken from Marvel Knights Black Widow #4. Finally, I'm going to mark this as complete so I don't have the guilt of leaving a story unfinished but I plan to update with more pieces of Clint/Natasha history.

_Natalia Romanova_

Sent to kill a traitor. He'd betrayed his country and the children under his protection. She stalked him to a warehouse where he'd been gathering intelligence to sell. She had known he was hours from fleeing the country.

Her orders were to obtain information on his American masters. She was cleared to use all necessary force to gather the intel and dispose of the traitor and his bank of information.

He tried all of the usual tactics: bribery, sympathy, weeping, and fighting. Finally, he began to shout nonsense at her. She ignored him while she searched for any last hidden pieces of equipment or documents that would betray his existence or her hand in its end. She realized after an hour or so that he was yelling her name. Her _real_ name. Her whole name. She was behind him, knife pressed to his neck before he could yell it again.

"What do you know about me?" she hissed in his ear.

He laughed, throat coarse and bloody from hours of yelling. "I know more about you than you ever will. I know about Barnes and the Red Room and all of the lies that fill your ruined head."

The shock was an unpleasant mixture of nausea and absolute terror. He switched to English, or at least she seemed to remember him doing so when she later told the story. She couldn't imagine why.

"Pretty little girl thinks she was a ballerina. Have you seen the ballerina's feet? You're no ballerina. You're a murderess soaked in blood and clinging to lies. You're not _the_ Black Widow; you're _a_ Black Widow. You know nothing! Go ahead and kill me. It will be easier than what they plan for you when you stop being so useful, my little dancer."

And she had killed him. She wasn't sure she'd meant to. Her memory, after all, wasn't very reliable.

Sixteen hours later, Clint Barton made a cautious journey down a corridor in the warehouse.

"Go to Siberia, they said. It's not as cold as you think, they said. The Cold War is over, they said. The worst that can happen to you now is curable with penicillin, they said."

"Clint?" the voice made his earpiece crackled painfully.

"Yes?" he stopped walking to answer the disembodied voice in his ear. He hadn't quite got used to it and didn't like losing one ear to a glorified telephone.

"Can you stop fucking talking to yourself? We've got at least one warm body in there."

"You wound me. I was talking to you, not to myself. I am trying to win your heart with bravado and humor in the face of life-threatening danger. Is it working?" he asked.

The only answer was another crackle of static. He grinned.

There was definitely something peculiar going on here. Something wasn't right. He had, in addition to letting his feelings about the godforsaken mission be known, been trying to draw out whoever was lurking in the shadows.

He reached the last door of the corridor.

"And what's behind door number three?" he said, kicking in the door and dropping into a crouch.

His target. Perhaps she would be beautiful under other circumstances but as she was covered in blood, barefoot and crying, the attraction was a little lost on him. She had no weapons in her hands and was pointing at her feet. She was speaking Russian and was utterly beyond his understanding.

_Shit, _he thought.

"Shit," he said.

"Clint?" the voice was back in his ear and a great deal more panicked than before.

"Clint, who is that? Who is talking? Why is she talking about dancing? Where is the asset?"

He took in the situation, the babbling woman and the dead man next to her. Bloody handprints on files and papers and the computer. The guy he was supposed to save was dead and the woman he was supposed to "eliminate" was staring up at him with unfocused eyes.

He sighed and took out the earpiece.

"Sprechen sie, err, English?" he asked her.

She tilted her head, suddenly alert, and frowned.

"Amerikanskaya?" she asked.

"Ah, si." he said.

"I would like to defect to the United States of America," she said in perfect, unaccented English. He sighed.

"I'm supposed to take you out," he said, holstering his pistol and dropping to the floor next to her.

She frowned again.

"Out like a date?" she asked.

"Let's not start picking out the invitations just yet. I need to make sure that Fury doesn't murder us both," he said.

She seemed resigned to not understanding what he was talking about and shrugged her shoulders. She leaned her head against the wall behind her and eyed him carefully.

"Hill?" he asked, reinserting his earphone.

"Clint, what the hell?" she sounded furious.

"Two to evac, one to recover and you'd best send in a cleaner," he said, eyeing his would-be target.

"Clint, we are not cleared for this," Hill was fairly screeching in his ear.

"Then get clearance," he said, "because this is happening. Barton out."

He took the earpiece out again and looked around for the Black Widow's shoes. He found two boots and one sock and handed them to her.

She looked away as she put them on. When she was done, he held out a hand to help her up.

"Have you got a jacket or something? Because it's fucking cold outside," he said as he led her back down the corridor and out into the frozen day to wait for their ride home.


	2. dreams

_Natasha Romanoff_

The first week of her "extended debriefing" was a blur. She didn't see Barton. On occasion, she saw the woman with the angry face who'd arranged for her transport to the USA. Mostly, though, she was interviewed by an Agent Coulson.

He was a hard man to dislike. He was calm, knowledgable and didn't flinch when she got too near him. He also brought doughnuts with him most mornings and tried to make her life seem less of a prison sentence. He had kind eyes.

Her knowledge was mostly operational. She could shed no more light on the procedures behind the Red Rooms or other Black Widows than she had read for herself in the warehouse. She could describe the weapons she used and how she used them but couldn't tell them where they'd come from or who gave the orders that she followed.

She thought this would have angered a lesser man but Agent Coulson seemed to accept her information for what it was worth.

She spent a long weekend alone in her quarters. Saturday and Sunday she woke up feeling feverish and disoriented. She hated that moment of half-sleep before the clarity of fully waking. It was a moment of intense weakness and confusion. She was certain on more than one occasion that she had only just stopped screaming.

In between dreams of where she ran until her feet bled and dreams where she kept ripping out i.v. tubes that only tangled more and kept her tied to a hospital bed, she dreamt of _him_.

James.

On Friday she had lost her temper. Of all things, she'd lost it with Coulson's sympathetic face when, for the third time in a row, she'd had to answer that she didn't remember. She'd banged her fist on the table and made such a scene that she was embarrassed to think of it. In her bunk, she cringed at the thought of some of the things she'd yelled at him. She devoutly hoped he didn't speak fluent Russian but his face gave away that he'd understood at least a little. She had begun shouting questions at him and at the CCTV cameras and at the two guards with their nervous looks and assault rifles. She thought she may have been crying. She knew at least that she had shouted about her wasted memory and something esoteric about reality. She cringed again. What had finally stopped her rampage was his soft touch on her wrist and a quiet murmuring of her name. Of course he would be able to stop a storm with a whisper. That's probably why he was her handler.

He had stopped the questioning for the day and led her himself to her quarters. He'd merely nodded at the guards and escorted her out of the room, hand at her elbow. In the hallway he'd whispered through gritted teeth for her to keep quiet.

Once in her room, he'd sat next to her on her bed. The only outward sign that anything had gone wrong was a stiff gesture to straighten his cufflinks.

"I don't think your room is bugged," he'd said, "but as unlikely as it may seem, I have been wrong in the past so forgive me for whispering."

He put his face close to hers and looked right into her eyes. He wanted her to see the truth in his words, that his pupils did not dilate and that he did not flinch or look away.

"With the Black Widow Protocol, they could falsify a lot of things but they could never figure out how to fake a smell in memory. The sense of smell is too strongly associated with memories and as best we can tell, they were never able to force that bond. Anything that you can remember having a smell, you can almost guarantee is real."

In his normal voice he said, "just hang in there. I have something in the works but I won't know for sure until Monday. Just…" he broke off, seemingly unable to articulate what it was he wanted her to do.

"Don't talk to anyone about anything, okay?" he said and, more sharply, "I'll see you on Monday."

Her head felt full. Smell. James. She could so vividly recall his face, the tension in his back when he was trying to keep her at arm's length, all together so much more of him than her other old memories. He was real; he had to be real. She could remember the smell of his sweaty skin and the smell of his pillow after sleep. He had been real.

She held onto that and revelled in it. She'd gone for so long without thinking about him that it felt sore and painful, like stretching a bruised muscle. When he left her all those years ago, it was such a complete and absolute break that she just turned that part of herself off.

Now, he was the basis for everything that had ever been real in her past.

Monday came and she forced the nightmares to the back of her mind. She was sitting alert on her bed when Coulson came in at 7:00. He said nothing as he escorted her to their usual conference room.

There weren't any doughnuts.

He looked so serious and unfriendly that her heart sank. They must have found out something about her that made her unworthy. Untouchable. They were going to send her back. She stiffened her back and resolved to show no disappointment. She could make her own way and rebuild her past.

"Have a seat, Ms. Romanova," he said, gesturing to the only seat on her side of a very long desk.

Coulson carried a file around to the other side of the desk and looked over to the mirrored wall on his left. He made a throat slashing gesture and turned to face her. He hadn't much choice in the matter as she had a death-grip on his tie and was less than an inch from his face and crouched on the desk.

"Ah," he said, "I knew I should've brought the doughnuts." The corner of his mouth twitched and she loosened her grip by a degree.

"Please, Ms. Romanova, sit down or there will be much more paperwork involved than I care to think about."

She let go slowly and sat back down, frowning.

"I don't like when people do this," she said, making the throat cutting gesture, "in reference to me. It usually means there's going to be lots of bleeding."

She paused a second, thinking.

"And paperwork. Lots of paperwork. We have that in Russia, too."

"Apologies, Ms. Romanova. I was indicating that my colleagues should cut the CCTV and leave the viewing room. Which might be proved by the fact that none of them came swooping in here to rescue me," he said lightly.

"Sorry," she muttered.

"I need to ask you a few questions and I want you to answer as honestly as you can, do you understand?" he asked, straightening his wrinkled tie. She just nodded.

"How many guards do we have on you at any given moment?" he asked.

"Six, not counting yourself and whoever it is that walks around up there at night," she said, gesturing towards the ceiling.

"How many escape routes are there from your room?" he asked.

"Four and a half," she answered. He raised an eyebrow.

"Half?"

"It depends upon whether you want to survive the escape or not," she said, shrugging. He thought for a moment.

"Oh, clever. The pipes? But yes, the fall would probably kill you. Excellent work," he said.

"If you were going to try to turn one of our agents, who would it be and why?" he said, sounding suspiciously like a middle manager performing a very strange job interview.

"Agent Hill," she said and Coulson looked almost comically surprised.

"She doesn't like me. Strong emotions are a good foundation for exploiting weaknesses," she said, simply.

"You _are_ scary," he said, with no small amount of wonder in his voice. He then stood up and indicated for her to stay where she was. He stepped through a door and came back with someone she recognized. Agent Nick Fury. She was sure he was on any number of kill lists and taking him down would have brought great personal glory. Secretly, she'd been glad never to have to face him. There were fearsome reputations and then there was Nick Fury.

She was impressed.

"So, Ms. Romonova, I see you know Director Fury. I guess it's a good time to mention that we aren't with the CIA," he said drily.

"You don't say," she said, her arms crossed over her chest in what Coulson would have described as a positively grumpy way were she not the Black Widow.

"I'm going to keep this short," Fury said, speaking for the first time. "We want you to come work for us."

"What?" Natalia looked at Coulson, searching for any hint of a joke or hoax. He looked utterly serious.

"What?" she said again, rather dumbfounded.

"You said she was smart, Coulson," Fury said, looking at the agent disapprovingly. Coulson just nodded.

"SHIELD?" she asked. No one said anything.

"But what about my intel and contacts? I thought SHIELD was more, well, proactive than the CIA? I thought I was an asset, not a potential agent," she said, her brain swiftly sorting through a mix of confusing and conflicting information.

Fury nodded at Coulson and they both sat at the desk. Coulson pulled out the file from earlier.

"We're of the opinion that you'd do much better in the field," Coulson said as he slid the folder towards her. She opened it and saw from her own bloody fingerprints that it contained the original documents from the warehouse. Not all of them, however, just ones that pertained to the Black Widow Protocol. There were chemical compounds, diagrams and photographs that she hadn't had time to take in. She looked up, questioningly.

"That is all of the information we have about the Red Room's methods," Fury said, tapping the file.

"No one outside of this room has any idea about what's in that file," Coulson continued. "The CIA seems to have a vague notion of some of it but they don't have enough information to be dangerous," he finished. Fury snorted. Clearly there was no love lost between the two agencies.

"We think that if they got ahold of you, they would be more interested in reverse engineering your programming," Coulson said. "We think you'd be rather more useful with your brain still inside your head instead of floating in formaldehyde somewhere under Dulles.

"Should you agree to work for us," Fury took over, "you get to keep that file and we tell them what they suspect already; namely that we picked up an old spook in Siberia who hasn't got anything new to sell."

"And if I refuse?" Natalia asked warily.

"If you refuse, you leave. We keep the file to destroy and you go about your merry way. Most ex-Soviet defections are flagged for the CIA so you'll probably end up going through this whole mess again with them. But it would be up to you to keep them from trying to get inside your memories through a hole in your head," Fury said.

"What's in it for you?" she asked, still unsure of what to trust. _Fight or flight._

"Have you seen your resume?" Coulson asked, incredulous.

"I think she wants to know why we would trust her as an agent, Coulson," Fury said.

"Trust is a powerful thing, Ms. Romanova. Coulson trusts Barton's instincts enough to take you in. I trust his judgment when he tells me that if given the chance to prove yourself, you won't go nuts and take down half a battalion in a blaze of glory. I give you the file and keep your secrets, you kind of have to trust me. It's a good system."

She waited a second before answering, the fierce torrent of memories both false and real that had been undone by one man in Siberia threatening to overwhelm her. She closed her eyes and thought of James. His rough hand in hers in front of a flickering and smoky fire. She could almost smell it. His deep laugh and whispered promise that someday they would get out of the life. They would listen to their better angels, he'd said. They would be free.

Her eyes snapped open and she said, "I accept."

"Excellent," said Fury and he stood up, hand held out for her to shake. "Welcome to SHIELD. I have other places to be but Coulson can get you up to speed on your new partner."

With that, he left a rather stunned Natalia with a grinning Agent Coulson.

"Agent-" she started to say but was cut off.

"Call me Phil," he said, still smiling. She frowned.

"Let's go with Coulson," he said.

"Coulson," she said, "I need a few things."

"Okay," he said cautiously.

"I will need money and credit and a flat. An apartment, I mean. Like on Friends. Three bedrooms. I need to own it. And I want a new name," she said, tumbling through the hurried words.

Coulson looked thoughtful. "Doable," he said, finally.

"What name?" he asked and wondered if he was going to have to get papers for a Svetlana Eastwood-Indiana-Jones or something similar. He'd had to do much worse.

"Call me Natasha. Natasha Romanoff," she said and there was a sad finality to the words.

"Natasha, before I bring Barton in, I want you to know something. You were a high-priority take. He was sent there to kill you on the strictest orders. He took a chance on you," Coulson said.

"I know-" Natasha started to interrupt but was stopped with a gesture from Coulson.

"You know some things. What you don't know is that he put more than just a suspension on the line. He put his whole career and his freedom on the line for you. He's not the type to ever mention it so I wanted you to know. To appreciate him," Coulson said, an unusually serious expression in his eyes.

"I assure you," Natasha said, fighting some emotions she couldn't name, "I understand the kind of man he must be. I knew one like him, once. He would have made the same call, I think."

"Good," said Coulson. Then he shouted for Barton to come through and his shadow filled the doorway. Natasha thought he might be nervous or wary of her and fought down some irritation. He came in the room and she broke into a wide smile. The pattern of his steps had given him away.

"You're the one who guarded from above!" she said, her smile brilliant. She'd felt a sort of kinship with him as he paced the ceiling above her during long nights. For his part, Clint Barton was at a loss for words. Bloodied, bruised, barefoot and weeping, she'd been something of a mess. Now, clean and simply dressed with her long red hair in a ponytail, she was smiling up at him in such a way that made his heart fail. She was stunning. He felt concussed.

He shook his head a little and held out a hand.

"Barton," he said, by way of reintroduction.

She, still smiling warmly, held out hers in return. "Natasha."

Agent Coulson nodded at them and looked for all the world like a very proud parent.


	3. the letter

**AN: obviously, I own nothing. This chapter is a look into the past. In my version of events, Nat knew Bucky and loved him but thinks he has been dead for a very long time. Also, she is more like comic-book Nat in that she doesn't age like the rest of us. I would place this somewhere in the 90s. Time is weird in the Marvel universe. More Clint next time as I fall into the hurt/comfort trope with wild abandon. Reviews would be awesome!**_  
_

_A long time ago_

He knew he hadn't much time to write the letter. By next week he'd either be dead or on a beach with Natalia.

She hated being left in the dark but if even half of what he found was true, her ignorance might well be the only thing that kept her alive. He wasn't entirely sure what Department X suspected about them or what they suspected he might know but he was damn well sure that if he went down, he would do it alone.

_Dear Nat,_

_If you're reading this then I'm probably already dead. I hope to leave this where you'll find it before they can come after you. Dept. X has lied and manipulated both of us. Our lives aren't even our own. I'm writing this as I wait for the last piece of proof I need._

_If I've failed, you must run. Don't take anything, just burn and run. If I live, I _will_ find you. Trust no one._

_If I don't make it_

He had to stop and control his breathing. The Winter Soldier may believe that love is a lie made up for bed time stories but James Barnes knew no such thing.

_If I don't make it, just know that I love you. Always will. No matter what happens or what you find out, know that it was always real. You're the best thing that ever happened to me and I'm sorry that I failed you - that you're reading this letter._

_Yours,_

_-B_

He folded it up and put it away before he could burn it like the others. He let out a sort of half-sob, half-cough and dropped his head into his hands. He had to see her. Now.

He pulled the antenna on his KGB-issued, Natalia-modified cellular phone and dialled her number. When she answered, he spoke only their personal code.

"Is this the cinema?" (This is not an emergency.)

"No, I'm afraid you have the wrong number. Maybe I can help you find what you were looking for?" (Acknowledged. I am free at the moment.)

"I heard there was a cinema playing a revival of _Casablanca. _Do you know the one I mean?" (Come over immediately.)

"No, sorry. I can try to find the number if you like?" (I'll be right over.)

"That's okay. Thank you for your help." (Goodbye.)

He paced with a nervous energy for the entire eighteen minutes it took her to arrive. He saw her walking up the pavement and took a moment to just enjoy her. Her red hair was longer than it ever had been. As usual, she was dressed mostly in black but she had a long grey scarf tied around her neck. It meant that she wasn't being followed.

He met her at the door before she could knock. For her part, she was astonished at how obviously upset he was. His lashes, so dark they seemed made-up, didn't distract from his bloodshot eyes. He had dark circles under them and a couple days worth of facial hair.

He clasped her face in his hands and stared intently at her. His gaze was so piercing that she sometimes blushed under his scrutiny, even during briefings. Then he kissed her and it was so needy, so hungry that she was already unbuttoning her jacket and tearing off her scarf by the time he closed the door behind her.

He stilled her hands and clasped them behind her back in one of his own. His eyes never left hers as he used his free hand to pull her closer. He smiled that crooked half-smile that made her heart pound and kissed her again, this time softly.

"[I've got you and I am never letting go]," he said in Russian and though it was a silly turn of phrase, he fairly burned with intensity.

"[You only caught me because I let you]," she replied.

Before he could brace himself for the inevitable, he found himself flat on his back on the floor of the entry hall to his apartment. She peered down at him and then climbed on top of him to deliver a kiss of her own. He sat up with her still straddling his lap and kissed her again. She pulled away.

"I told you to speak English, James," she scolded him. "I need to work on my accent and idiots."

"Idioms," he said and his laugh earned him a kick.

"Hey, watch it. You're very precariously situated here," he said and adjusted himself under her. She moved to get up but he held her closer. The moment stretched in silence until she took his face into her hands.

"What is wrong, my love?" she asked and kissed his forehead, his cheeks and mouth again. She saw him blinking away a tear.

"I just," he said and coughed to clear his throat. He started again. "I just don't want to lose you."

"Have you been having the nightmares again, James?" she asked, a troubled look on her face.

"I…yeah," he said, not meeting her gaze. She frowned. He wasn't one to overflow with words or explanations. He was upset; he reached out to her. So, she decided, she would reach back.

"I can take your mind off of it," she said and shifted her weight against him in a way that made him gasp.

"Yes," he said roughly, "I think you can." And in spite of their best intentions, they made it no further than the living room.

A few hours and as many cigarettes later, she was falling in and out of sleep on his chest. Always on his right side, away from the cold metal. Not, he knew, because it bothered her. It was just another of the thousand tiny ways that she understood him. He thought again about just leaving right then and explaining it all on the way out of the country.

"Did you get that American passport we talked about?" he asked, bringing her rather abruptly to the land of the waking.

"Hmm, yes," she said, closing her eyes again.

"What name did you pick?" he said, partly out of curiosity and partly to disguise his real anxiety.

"Natalie Romanoff," she answered.

"What? What about Barnes?" he said, a little surprised.

She sat up and wrapped the sheet around her chest.

"Since when are we married?" she asked, a dangerous look on her face.

"Well, I just thought that if we ever did go to America it would be, you know, together," he said, fighting the urge to fidget.

"And we have to be married for that?" she asked, one eyebrow cocked in mock outrage.

"It would draw less attention," he said and trailed off. She glared at him but he saw amusement in her eyes.

"James Fucking Barnes, this had better not be some half-assed, ill-advised, poorly-planned, extremely inelegant marriage proposal," she said, and he couldn't help being impressed with her ability to so exactly express her outrage in a foreign language.

She threw a pillow at his face.

He laughed and it was one of those perfect, uncontrolled laughs that were so rare in his life.

"You should see your face! No, it's just, well, you know, Sao Paolo wasn't so bad. We were married for that op," he said.

"Oh," she said, suppressing a laugh herself, "and that turned out so well."

"Well, we survived, didn't we?"

"James, we were the _only_ once who survived that mess."

"Well," he said dismissively, "that was because of bad intel, not because we were married."

"True," she said, "but it does seem like kind of a bad omen. I guess you'll have to find some other way to be my ball and chain."

She scooted next to him again and snuggled back to her spot on his chest.

"Did I get that right?" she asked, "It seems so silly. Am I the ball or the chain?"

He squeezed her close and turned off the bedside lamp with his other hand.

"You can be whatever you want," he whispered into her hair. _If I can manage to survive the next week._

The next morning, she slipped out before he woke up. He had a fuzzy idea of being kissed and smelling her perfume. He packed the letter into the inside pocket of his pea coat and set out to meet his source with more hope in his heart than he'd felt in months.

Six days later, he did not see the red dot on his chest and he did not see what followed.

The deputy director of Department X and his favourite lackey sat on a cold park bench.

"Did you intercept the letter?" asked Drakov.

"Of course," answered Tuganov, "I did it myself."

"Was there anything else? Did he have any other documents?"

"No, just the letter. I guess he thought she would take it on faith," he said and they shared a cruel laugh.

"The reprogramming?" asked Drakov.

"All as planned. He's in cold storage now, waiting for the big show."

She didn't even get a real phone call. She got a message on her answering machine. She rewound the tape and listened four times before she could comprehend the contents.

_Agent Romanova, there's been an accident. The Winter Soldier is dead. It was a weapons malfunction, a single gunshot wound. He died instantly. We're sorry and will reassign you in a matter of days. Any questions should be directed to your immediate superior._

She tried to believe that it was a trick, a ruse to uncover their relationship. So she stayed quiet. She turned off her emotions and took refuge in being the Black Widow. It wasn't until they showed her his body, wheeled out from the cold mortuary and shown to younger agents as an abject lesson in weapons safety, that she really believed he was gone.

She held her tears for another day, just in case she was being watched. Then she went, methodically and with an increasing weight in her chest, to all seventeen of their drops, meeting places and hidden spots. She gathered all of the pictures, mementos and letters - all the proof that James Barnes had lived and that he'd loved her - and burnt them. The last to go on the pile was her brand-new American passport, issued to Natasha Barnes of Brooklyn, New York.

As the fire burnt, she remembered the words of her very first trainer. _Love is for children_. It was a damn lie. What he should have taught her at that young age was that love fucking hurt. That it couldn't last forever and was therefore doomed to be painful.

_Never again_, she thought. _I am an assassin and a spy and I am damn good at my job. These things I can control so these things I will do._ Then she turned to walk away and never looked back.

And so it was that the Black Widow didn't speak a word of English and didn't hold the gaze of any man until the day that Clint Barton walked into the remains of her burning life and helped her up.

_Present day_

"I'll be the chain," she murmured in her medically-induced sleep.

"Coulson, does that mean something to you?" asked Nick Fury from the opposite side of her hospital bed.

"No, sir, just gibberish, I think," the worried Agent Coulson replied. He obviously hadn't yet gone to sleep but Fury wouldn't tell him to go home. Phil would do what he wanted in this circumstance, anyway. No point in fighting him.

"And she's out of danger?" he asked and Coulson nodded his reply.

"And Barton?" he asked. The blood drained from Coulson's face.

"He's on his way, sir," Coulson said, "it's going to be hard on him."

He met Fury's eye and an unspoken conversation let him know Fury was of the same opinion.

"Look after him, okay?" Fury said and left the hospital room.


End file.
